Just a couple of weeks ago, when the marketing for the movie was ramping up, I expressed some dismay over what was looking like not a very cohesive message as to what made this movie worth seeing. I knew from the lack of chatter about Solo online that the box office was not going to be impressive, and certainly wasn’t going to oust Infinity War out of the biggest box office opening weekend slot. I was right. Forget ousting Marvel, Solo didn’t even perform close to its own projections, and it was a four day weekend. Say folks had stuff to do for two of those days, that still left two days and a Thursday night to see a huge new Star Wars movie, and they still chose to stay home. Yikes.
But me? I went into it with cautious optimism. Excited to see it. After all, I’m a Star Wars fan. A big one. At one point in time, an obsessive one. And yet, it was hard for even me to conjure up a suitable amount of excitement over Solo. What is going on???
The Big Disappointments
Studio Fast-Tracking
Let’s start with the franchise itself. Ever since Disney acquired Lucasfilm, we’ve been bombarded with Star Wars news and newness. A new trilogy, anthology films, re-releases and even a new Star Wars park at Disneyland. But a new movie EVERY year since The Force Awakens? EVERY YEAR?? This isn’t The Lord of the Rings, this isn’t a limited trilogy, and this isn’t 2001. We don’t consume media or films in the same way, and if Kathleen Kennedy keeps shelling out this many films in the franchise this quickly, we are going to start forgetting what we’ve seen and what we haven’t. Or we are going to stop caring.
This over-saturation has caused a bit of fandom ennui, which is a new phenomenon for Star Wars fans. Three years between the first movies. Then 15 years before the Special Editions, which ramped us up for the prequel trilogy – also released 3 years between each movie. Then another three before the animated Clone Wars show. And what do Star Wars fans do during these hiatuses? We watch and re-watch. We buy merch. We read Expanded Universe novels. We write fanfic. We commiserate. We watch production news. We theorize. We devour spoilers. And we breathe. And we watch other things. And even though Star Wars is not always in the forefront of our minds, we are happy to welcome it back after a good, long season.
But now? It’s everywhere. It’s all the time. It’s too much. I’ve seen The Last Jedi exactly once. In the theater. I only purchased The Force Awakens because my daughter wanted to watch it with a friend who hadn’t seen it, and it was months after it was available digitally. I don’t own Rogue One. Contrast that with the several disparate copies of the original trilogy that I owned between the ages of 7 and 20. Why would I need to devour and re-devour TLJ or RO or anything else in the SW universe when I have something new popping up in no time at all?
Slow your ROLL, Disney. We don’t need a Boba Fett picture right this minute. You might want to tell his story, but I don’t need to see it until at least 2028.
Shoddy Storytelling
So, what happens when a movie is fast-tracked on a schedule that’s not particularly tenable? The narrative suffers. Everybody knows that Solo was beset with issues – from the script (which I thought could be salvaged by Larry Kasdan, but ooof), the directors, the budget, the timeline, to the lead actor – and it was evident that the story itself was going to languish. Rogue One had some similar issues with its ending, and it showed. But here is where the Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) origin story could have upped the anthology game: we know this character. You don’t have to introduce the nuances of Han and Chewie and Lando and get us to care like you did with Jyn Erso. WE ALREADY KNOW THEM REALLY WELL. We are already invested. So, just give us a good story.
But … and here is where my real review of the movie begins (because I love nothing more than to bury a lede), this story? Mediocre. Meh at best. A decent heist film with a little bit of heart. And a good pump on nostalgia for hardcore fans, but that was not enough to sustain 2 hours and fifteen minutes with no emotional center, piecemeal dialogue and poor representation. It could have been way better. Indulge me a minute.
1. Han and the Millennium Falcon, arguably the most important relationship in the movie, and the emotional heart of their “meeting” relied solely on OUR excitement seeing him see it. The story itself created no reason for Han to care that much. In fact, the MF reveal in The Force Awakens, which also relied heavily on nostalgia, was far better because Rey actually needed it. There was a narrative reason for her to run to it and a impetus for her to fly it well.
How else could this relationship have been written? Well. Han is being brought up on Corellia, the ship-building planet. We’ve heard Han talk about the “big, Corellian ships” before. He knows them; we know he knows them. He should know what the Millennium Falcon is as soon as he sees it, and in Solo, he does. However, when he sees the Millennium Falcon for the first time, he is awed and mentions that his “dad built these.” Um … what? First of all, we just watched an origin story that set up the purpose and price of hyper drive fuel and a relationship with a random girl. But we could have seen Han’s father, building ships like – exactly like, sort of like, WHO CARES HOW LIKE – the Millennium Falcon while a young Han learns about them from him, desires to one day pilot one, to make his dad proud, to go beyond what his mechanic or engineer father did and leave Corellia for good on one. We could have seen a FLEET of Millennium Falcons on Corellia, the first ever commissioned, 100s of them in pristine condition, Corellian mechanics proud of this super fast freighter. Then we could have seen it blown up and destroyed, perhaps even as a young Han looks on and sees his father die at the same time his father’s greatest achievement was destroyed forever. Han vows even more resolutely to leave Corellia, to become a pilot. For a REAL reason, not the Oliver Twist nonsense they fed us.
This would have made Han’s absolute hard-on for the Millennium Falcon a lot more resonate and emotional when he sees it for the first time. Instead of relying on the audience’s sense of nostalgia, the narrative could have relied on its own set-ups and emotional centers. THIS was the biggest disappointment of the movie for me.
2. Han and Flying. Another paramount aspect of Han Solo’s personality: he’s an excellent pilot. But somehow, after signing up to join the Imperial Air Force, we never see Han fly a single thing. Instead we are immediately thrust into a infantry/foot soldier scenario that he bungles so badly it is completely impossible to believe that he has survived three years taking orders or has indeed even learned anything. It is even less believable that Han could be a good pilot by the time he takes off with Beckett and his crew than it is that Luke Skywalker could have rented a ship on Tattooine and flown it himself. I have zero confidence in his skills because we’ve seen none.
And then, when he gets his big chance – when he gets to make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs – it’s less about his flying than it is about mainlining unrefined hyperfuel and droid brains. Even the teaser trailer gave us a quick glimpse that he would impress his shipmates with handy dandy flying tactics, but they were mostly cut by the time this came to theaters. Where was the quick-thinking, quick-witted, quick-skilled flyboy getting through dangers to make the Kessel Run happen? Again, disappointed.
3. Han and Chewie. Even my youngest daughter, the least excitable Star Wars movie-goer you can imagine (not a fan) was excited to see Chewie, and to see how Han and he met. And I did love the call back to the Rancor as they gave Han over to “the beast.” Their meet-cute was one for the ages. But the biggest issue that could have easily been addressed and made sense of a decades-long question? How does Han speak Wookie??? Too easy. Too fast. Told not shown. There could have easily been a Wookie who lived in the orphanage on Corellia with him, or worked with his dad building the non-existent fleet of Millennium Falcons. Had we seen a montage of any flight training with Han, perhaps a Wookie or two could have flipped some switches and taught him some yawning screams. But no. He just MAGICALLY knows some Wookie, and he and Chewie become the definition of insta-love. Sure, there was some mutual life-saving going on, but this was another huge missed opportunity.
4. Han and his quest to get back to Qi’ra was forgettably lame. The Han Solo we know would not have striven for years simply to get a pilot’s license and a ship to go back and a get a girl. He’s a scoundrel with a heart of gold (or as Qi’ra lamely put it, “the good guy”), but he’s not sentimental. Hell, in The Force Awakens we learn that he’s spent YEARS away from the love of his life and the mother of his child to keep scrounging and smuggling and hustling with Chewie.
So much about why he would go to such lengths for Qi’ra made no sense. We never saw them run a scam together. We never saw her go out of her way to save a young Han from punishment or suffering. She’s literally JUST a girl.
And sure, this COULD have been an origin story of how Han developed his scoundrely ways, only relying on himself. Could have, if Qi’ra had effectively betrayed him in any real way, truly hurt him, or even had made him aware of her conspiring with Maul. But instead, she just flies away. Like Lando. And he goes after … Lando, and the Millennium Falcon, which we are to assume is still his greatest love.
5. Han and the little things that we never quite get enough information on. That little bit of sleight of hand? I realize that the orphan trope requires us to believe that he is a crafty pickpocket, but it would have been nice for that to have been effectively set up when he was younger. His penchant for counting cards? See: sleight of hand. The dice? LORD. He got them from where exactly? They were important to him, why? It’s the little things that matter in a movie like this, and they didn’t matter at all.
6. Solo and women. I’ve already mentioned that Qi’ra is a blank female slate. Just a girl, with little to no personality, whom Han thinks he loves and whom the audience is supposed to assume was sold into Crimson Dawn slavery but made it to the top on her wiles, or something. She has no distinguishing character traits. She is the trinket that Han and Beckett and Dryden Vos fight over.
Thandie Newton’s Val has grit and gumption and is gone way too soon for it to register. A huge waste. That sacrifice should have been Beckett. Only Phoebe Waller-Bridge as L3 was given the room to maneuver with a character blessed with a unique voice and adept attitude. She is a better droid than the dry K2SO in Rogue One, but again, was gone too soon. The best representation for female characters in Solo was Enfys Nest (Erin Kellyman), a welcome surprise to the pirate gang story, and a great place to land Han’s conscience in the end. But she doesn’t absolve the movie of its woman problem.
If the best female characters in your movie are masked or CGI robots, and if the worst are killed too soon or complete brick walls with no agency, you have more than one woman problem. You have them all.
Saving Grace
The movie was pretty fun. Chase sequences and space fights and blaster slinging fun. Funny lines fun.
Also: Donald Glover. His portrayal of Lando was transcendent. And the running gag of Lando saying Han’s name like “hand” was perfection. Also, his capes.
